I would like to make sure I got this roughly correct. In the West our discussions about "Being" began with Parmenides, who, after disputing Herclitus' idea that all is Flux, declared "Whatever is, is. It must be. It cannot not be." And Parmenides did this because he needed something more certain and constant than ever-changing? He wanted a reliable fortress of nouns.
"Yes. Bang the drums. It was a big day sometime in the Sixth Century BC and you've captured the precise psychological and philosophical pivot point that set the entire trajectory of the Western mind."
Are you telling me Parmenides was chicken-shit?
"I wouldn't say that! He was uncomfortable with the theoretical approach to the world and the universe Heraclitus was proposing."
